la asignatura marginada!

I enjoyed the reading about backwards planning and found that the idea of it really resonates with me. We have read/talked so much (in what classes? It's all blurring together now...) about the pitfalls of planning a really awesome lesson plan without thinking about where it fits in the context of the larger educational goals. Wait, Bob Bain mentioned something about that on our first day (about how he had a mentor that helped him think through his great idea and really put it in context); we also read the thing about the teacher who did something with Shakespeare (um, sorry, it's late! Brainpower is diminishing!) but then never mentioned it again, etc.

Reading through the NYT teaching section was amazing; it is incredible how many resources there are out there. I was disappointed (if not unsurprised) that there was very little that addresses my content area. I was told before joining the program by a former student that world languages students are sometimes treated (or their subjects are treated, I should say) as kind of like the bastard children of all the subjects. I think part of that has to do with the difficulty of defining what it is a world languages teacher does, and what, if anything, is the agreed upon goal of teaching a foreign language?

This question really intrigued me as an undergraduate studying two foreign languages, because on the one hand studying languages is a humanities field: you are reading literature, watching films, writing papers, etc. But there is also a cultural/historical/political component: you can take history classes, anthro classes, etc. And the particular focus can depend, too, on the language you study. In my case, for example, my Spanish major was in general much more sort of liberal arts focused, whereas with the Chinese major I took more polisci and history classes--I suppose because there more people interested in Chinese who wanted to pursue politics or business or something like that. Studying a foreign language can also be a study of linguistics and, in particular, second language acquisition. And there is the fact that for every student who just really wants to read Don Quixote, there is a pre-med student who wants to put on their med school app that they are fluent in Spanish.

So all this makes me think about my content area, and how important it is that I understand my goals as a teacher--this fits in with both of the readings for this week. I have an idea that I want all my students to learn to speak Spanish (or begin to learn), obviously, but also that I want them to understand something about history, other cultures and social issues.

But I think it will be important for me to read more from world language teachers to hear how they imagine their job and their goals as educators. For this I am grateful that we are being introduced to new resources; indeed, I hope to find answers to these questions that I pose from blogs and from twitter...and who knows where else.